EDITORIALISE ME! - ALL WEEK! (10.09.2026)

Mark Duffield (0:00)

Hello, everybody, welcome to the SENWA Radio Studio. We're out here at Optus Stadium. It's a Monday morning in our fair city of Perth, and we're here thanks to Beaumont Home's award-winning design built to be loved forever. It's gonna be sunny in Perth today, a top of 23 degrees, made in WA for WA. This is Mornings with Mark Duffield on SENWA.

So, freemantle season is alive despite the boilover lost to hawthorn on Thursday night. It's probably even a little healthier than it otherwise might have been thanks to the other boilover of the weekend, and that was Sydney's 53-point demolition job on Brisbane at the SCG.

The Hawks flipped the entire final script by dismantling the Dockers, and then the Swans, without five of their best team, and with a sixth, skipper Callum Mills, going down before half time, they flipped the script again by hammering the lacklustre Lions. Now, freemantle, obviously, their first task, they have to beat Geelong this week to prevent this season becoming a total waste, but if they do, a preliminary final date with the Undemand Swans would await. Now, had Brisbane done what we all expected them to do, then the preliminary final pathway for the Beaten Dockers would have included a trip to the Gabba to face the Lions, and that's something akin to football's mission impossible.

Now, people say finals footy is different, but really, it's actually just home and away footy with GST added. There's more riding on it, so you have to pay a higher price for it. And on Thursday against Hawthorne, freemantle got caught with a number of players who weren't ready to pay the price. And the first thing we should say is the Hawks were good. They were very, very good. But it must also be said they were assisted by a freemantle team who gave them the ball back repeatedly in the first half before the game became a goal-for-goal battle after halftime. The Hawks brought forwards up to the contest. They plonked players in the corridor to make freemantle's rapid-fire ball movement riskier. And the Dockers' ball carriers didn't adjust. They repeatedly tried high risk, and at times, frivolous handballs that resulted in turnovers and gifted the Hawks' possession in areas from which they could launch attacks which were going to be hard for freemantle to defend. A lot was made of the decision to play Brandon Walker as the match-up for Nick Watson. Now, first, you have to say that if the Dockers were sufficiently concerned with the form of Judd McVie to drop him for this match, they should have at least been thinking about it in round 24, and therefore, Walker should have played in that game against Carlton when a number of players were either rested or managed. But when all is said and done, if we're honest about Thursday night, Walker was neither the problem nor the solution against the Hawks. If you took Jordan Clark, Luke Jackson, Andy Brayshaw, Alex Pearce, and maybe Oscar MacDonald, who did quite well on Jack Gunston, if you took them out of the equation, Freemantle were pretty much beaten everywhere by the Hawks. Paddy Vos got completely dominated by James Cicely, who controlled the game from defence. Josh Tracy got badly beaten by Josh Battle, although if you gave me a dollar for every time Battle got away with pushing Tracy in the back to get him under the ball, I could have bought myself a beer. Caleb Sarong did not reach his usual high standards midfield, and all three of the Dockers X Factor mids, Hayden Young, Murphy Reid, and Shea Bolton, were below par on the night. You don't win finals against good opponents when that many of your best players are off their tucker. What we can say about Fremantle's semi-final opponent Geelong, like all Chris Scott coach Katz teams, the Katz will have to be beaten. They will not beat themselves, but this Fremantle team is good enough to beat them, and the home team will start favourites on Friday night. They need to win this, otherwise the runner final's defeat grows, and with it, the monkey on the back over final's performance grows as well.

The stakes are high because a win against the Katz puts the Dockers very much back in the Premiership mix. Give us your thoughts and questions this morning on Frio's loss. 487 736 736 is the text line. 1312 55 is the Barra and O'Day open line. Barra and O'Day, because little things are everything. Tuesday morning in Perth, we are here thanks to Beaumont Homes, award-winning design, built to be loved forever. It's going to be sunny in our city today, a top of 22 degrees, made in WA for WA. This is Mornings with Mark Duffield on SENWA.